Brides Of The Impaler (30 page)

Cristina drooled, then blinked several times. Next, Britt slapped her in the face.

“Cristina!”

Cristina rubbed her face, took a deep breath. “Jeez…”

“Yeah! Jeez! You’re all fucked-up!” Britt shoved a blouse at her. “Put that on! The guys could be home any minute!”

Cristina roused as if from anesthesia, but eventually complied.

“It’s either booze or drugs, so just tell me. And no bullshitting!”

Cristina frowned. “Stop yelling. I don’t take drugs and I didn’t have anything to drink.”

“Then explain. You looked like you were in a vegetative state when I walked in here. Now I want an explanation, and it better be good ’cos if it’s not, I’m checking you in for a psych evaluation right away.”

The threat braced Cristina. “I’m all right. I just—”

“Just
what?
” Britt’s temper continued to boil. “You
obviously went into the basement”—she pointed to the detestable skull—“and brought that thing up here! Why?”

Cristina sat up straight, buttoning her blouse. “I don’t know, it just occurred to me—”

“It
occurred
to you? It occurred to you to go back down into that goddamn basement—
nude
—and bring that gross skull up here? Cristina, do you know how crazy that sounds?”

“Stop yelling!” she whimpered. “I’m not sure what happened exactly.”

“Did you black out again?”

“No, no, this time—well, I remember feeling weird, after the cab dropped me off. And I was hot, so I took off my clothes and took a nap. Then I remember going down into the basement, and-and…it was because I just felt
impelled
to. I can’t explain it beyond that, Britt. It’s like something
told
me something else was down there.”

Britt sat down, still fuming. “Jesus Christ, that damn basement’s got you delusional. Something else down there? Cristina, you already knew that dog skull was down there. We all found it together, remember?”

Cristina thought through a stasis. “Not the dog skull. Something else. I found something else, and…you probably won’t believe it.”

Britt sighed. “Cristina, go ahead and try me. After all this, I think I can handle anything. So you found something else? Where? In the hole?”

“In the iron barrel. Something didn’t seem right about the depth so I looked at it closer and found a false bottom.”

Britt stared at her.

“Go look if you don’t believe me. There was a false bottom in it, to hide
this
.” Then Cristina reached into her desk and withdrew a foot-high object that looked like an old stoppered decanter.

Britt fell silent. She wasn’t quite sure how to assess this, or her friend. At her job she saw unstable women gradually become delusional all the time, but this?

“Didn’t you tell me a couple days ago that recently your recurring dream has taken on new details?”

Cristina nodded. “Yes, first it was just the nun with the bowl, and the colored lines. But then I’d notice other things in the dream that weren’t there before: a man on a stone slab, a”—she glanced to the skull—“a barking dog, and…some sort of a flask or decanter. Like this one.”

Impossible
, Britt thought without saying it.
But then so
was the bowl. She either knew those things were down there in
advance, or she has a psychic sensitivity
. She decided to deliberate on that later. Instead, she picked up the decanter. It felt heavy.
Full
, she thought at once.
But full of what?
“Show me this false bottom,” she ordered. “Then I
might
believe you.”

Without a word, Cristina took Britt back down into the basement. The hole remained as they’d left it when the men had pulled the barrel out. Britt knelt and studied it, and saw a circular plate of rusted metal lain aside. She hefted it up, placed it in the barrel, and saw that it did not go all the way to the bottom. It left a good six-inch gap.

She’s not lying
, Britt thought, uneasy now. “All right. I believe you. But Paul and Jess won’t. They’re going to think you knew about this in advance. They’re going to think you made it up to bring attention to yourself.”

Cristina looked down solemnly. “Do you believe that?”

“No.”

Britt didn’t know what to think now. Her eyes tracked along the floor without any forethought but stopped.

Most of the cement patchwork now lay in pieces; one piece, however, retained that odd imprint: the dragon strangled by its own tale, a warped cross branded on its back, and the words, O QUAM MAGNIFICUM, O DOMNUL.

Britt flinched from a chill, then rose and grabbed Cristina’s hand. “Come on. The guys would go ape-shit if they caught us down here.”
What am I going to do with her?
she worried.
And what the HELL is going on here?
Back on
the first floor, she urged Cristina toward her room. “Get dressed, sis. They could be home any minute.”

Cristina nodded meekly and disappeared into the bedroom.

Britt let out a long sigh, then poured herself a drink.
That’s great. She’s nuts and I’m a drunk. Thank God for positive
environments
. But the alcohol softened her cynicism with the first sip. She strode back upstairs and looked quizzically at the decanter.
Did she REALLY dream about
this before she found it?
Britt was well versed with liars but…
Cristina’s never been a liar. What, then?

The decanter felt creepy with its dull clay surface, which felt similar to the clay that covered the bowl. Worse, though, was the decanter’s
fullness
. Was it wine? Old holy water? She squinted, then, and noticed tiny scratchlike writing around the decanter’s base.

KANESAE, ENAMOURER OF WLAD, CNIHT OF DRWGLYA

An inexplicable queasiness came to her stomach.
Drwglya
, she thought, and felt even sicker when she realized what that resembled. She gulped, put the decanter in a desk drawer along with the animal skull, and went back downstairs.

Cristina had dressed in jeans and a different blouse, and now sat quietly in the kitchen.

“I don’t know what to make of any of this,” Britt broke the silence.

Cristina couldn’t have looked more forlorn. “You said Paul and Jess would think I’m lying if we told them about this…”

Britt patted Cristina’s shoulder, then sat down. “They probably would. They’re
men
, Cristina, and they’re lawyers. That usually means they’re stubborn, intractable, and very close-minded. They only think inside their own box.”

A hopeful glint showed in Cristina’s half-teary eyes. “Then…let’s just
not
tell them.”

Britt nodded. “Maybe we will one day, but not any time soon. It wouldn’t do anybody any good. I put the decanter and that creepy skull in your desk. We won’t tell them anything.”

Cristina seemed relieved.

“When they get home, they’ll probably be half in the bag already, and that’ll work to our favor. We just have to act like everything’s normal, okay?”

Cristina nodded.

“You see, Cristina. Guys like Jess and Paul live in a black-and-white world. They can never see the gray…”

Some kind of cognizance came to Cristina’s face. “What
is
the gray? That’s really what we’re talking about, isn’t it?”

Britt sipped her drink and nodded, but didn’t look at Cristina.

“Britt? There’s something in this house, isn’t there?”

“I think…maybe. Yes,” Britt admitted her deepest thoughts. “And
that
, honey, is what we’re really talking about. It’s affected me several times, not to mention that it’s put
you
through a wringer. Let’s just not worry about it for now.” She gave Cristina a morose look. “Let’s treat it like we treat our childhood. Pretend it never happened, and who knows? Maybe we’ll figure it out some day.” Next, she uttered a humorless chuckle. “Yeah, it just might be that this dream house of yours is haunted.”

“A nun, huh?” Vernon questioned.

Did Professor Fredrick smile? “Oh, yes, but to understand her role, you must understand Vlad’s conception of the Order of the Dragon. The only reason he wore the Order’s colors was to appease the Holy Roman Emperor, who— after Vlad’s repeated victories over the Turks—promised additional troops to reinforce Vlad’s depleting ranks. But it was a
false
promise. No reinforcements were ever dispatched, and Vlad suffered a catastrophic defeat just south of Bucharest. His army was all but wiped out.”

The ultimate
screwjob, Vernon thought.

“Hence,” Fredrick continued, eyes closed again, “Vlad felt so betrayed by the emperor and the pope that he maintained the pretense that he was still a knight of the Order while secretly
despising
what the Order stood for.”

“Catholic doctrine?” Vernon guessed.

“Exactly. Like the late Templars who continued to wear the cross but engaged in atrocity, sexual abandon, and— some say—Satanism. Now here’s where history becomes besmirched by myth. Vlad had two legal wives, though he had little to do with them—his true love was a concubine and prostitute named Kanesae, who was
quite
diabolical in her own way. Vlad was so incensed by the emperor’s betrayal that he supposedly cursed God so vehemently that God condemned him. This is where Kanesae comes
in; not only did she urge Vlad to become a heretic, she would assist him. Vlad would have her masquerade as a nun and actually commit sacrifices in the devil’s name. She would recruit other prostitutes to help her, and they would impale Christian women of childbearing age. There were rumors of rituals as well.”

“When does the vampire angle come in?” Vernon was curious.

“At the same time, toward the end of Vlad’s life. The favorite legend is that Vlad became a vampire by being bitten by one, but one of the older explanations from codices of Orthodox Romania claim nothing of the sort. It implies that on the night Vlad cursed God, he was visited by the subcarnate spirit of the succubus, who came bearing the blood of Lucifer himself. Vlad consumed the blood and then became the prince of the undead. The codices also bear out that the succubus was Kanesae. She was actually
sent
to Vlad, to do the dev il’s bidding.”

“A succubus masquerading as a nun.” Vernon tried to get it straight.

“Whose duty was to assist Vlad in becoming one of the most evil men in history.” Fredrick picked up the boxed figurine again. “Which brings me to
this
.”

“A vampire
nun
,” Vernon said.

“Um-hmm. Quite like Kanesae, especially when you consider the object in her hands.”

“Oh, the bowl with the three gems in it,” Vernon remarked.

Fredrick grimly appraised Vernon. “That’s not a mere bowl…”

Cristina didn’t ask the men about the bowl.
Britt’s right.
Don’t bring it up, and don’t mention the decanter
. It made
sense but she
was
curious. She wondered if they’d gotten the gemmed bowl appraised yet.

She could hear the others downstairs, laughing, digging into the fancy pizzas. Cristina had said she’d join them after doing a little more studio work but this was a lie.
I
need to get my head straight
, she told herself at her desk. It was the decanter that bothered her most of all…

There’s no way I knew about it before it appeared in the
dream
—Another message appeared on her answering machine: Bruno again, but not to rave about preorders this time. His voice sounded strange. “Cristina, dear. I just received a peculiar call—regarding you. Call me as soon as you can.” But Cristina only sighed.
I’ll call him tomorrow.
Don’t feel like dealing with it now
.

She opened the drawer, wincing right off at the macabre dog skull.
Why would anyone do that?
Then she reached past it and withdrew the decanter.

Dusk seemed to slip into the room as she looked at the odd object. Was it really wine? She held it up to the light, to discern some writing on it.

KANESAE, ENAMOURER OF WLAD, CNIHT OF DRWGLYA

Drwglya
, she tried to pronounce the word in her head.
Sounds like Dracula
…The first word, though, disturbed her more.

Kanesae. Did I hear that word in a dream, too?

She turned quickly at the sound of a hiss. Was it just the air-conditioning blowing against the drapes? She revolved on her chair, then found herself staring into an open closet.

Her mouth slowly drooped as the darkness within seemed to form an outline—a figure.

An angled shape like a woman in a nun’s habit.

“Cristina!” Paul called out. “You better get down here before the pizza’s gone!”

The closet, of course, was empty.
Just my screwed up imagination
again
, she knew. “Coming!”

She checked the closet more closely, then put the decanter away and headed downstairs.

“If it’s not a bowl, then what is it?” Vernon asked.

“It’s a relic, very rare, and only referred to in the codices I previously mentioned,” Fredrick said. Now he seemed puzzled and intrigued simultaneously. “Which is the oddest part of all. Very little has ever been written of this particular angle of the legend. It’s all the Bram Stoker stuff these days, which were just hearsay exaggerations from Romanian monks who’d fled to England during one of Vlad’s religious scourges. But the myth
I’m
referring to? It’s never even been translated into English.”

I’m losing him again
, Vernon realized. “You mean this Kanesae woman, and this thing that looks like a bowl?”

“Yes, yes.”

“Then how do
you
know about it?”

“Because I read the actual codices myself, after I’d recovered from my injuries during the earthquake. My point is, their contents is hardly common knowledge, Inspector. They’re archived in a convent in the town of Dobruja.”

“In other words, it’s not like these texts are available at the public library,” Vernon speculated.

“Heavens no,” Fredrick replied. He kept eyeing the sinister figurine. “That’s why this is so surprising.”

Vernon tried to contain a rising aggravation. “I don’t understand, sir. The
bowl
is what’s so surprising?”

“Yes, yes, but not a bowl—it’s a chalice, or I should say the representation of a very evil relic mentioned all too rarely in the Romanian registries. It’s supposed to be the chalice that Vlad drank Lucifer’s blood from—a perversion of Christ’s Communion to the Apostles. Just as Christ gave his blood to the faithful, so did the Devil. The bowl
was said to be the skullcap of Adam, set into clay from the Tigris River; hence, its talismanic power. And it was Kanesae—the subcarnate—who came to Vlad bearing the chalice.”

“Subcarnate?” Vernon queried.

“A demonic incarnation only half-flesh—only able to become palpable at night, and it was this entity, Kanesae, who then brought Adam’s skull as a mock chalice, filled to the brim with the blood of Lucifer himself. Just as God had abandoned Vlad on the battlefield, Vlad would abandon God in his heart…and he drank the blood. He sold his soul to become undead.” Now a partial grin came to the old man’s lips. “At least that’s how
this
version of the legend goes. Now, of course, you’re wondering how so many relative similarities can be not only found on your crime scenes, but who exactly is the person who designed this doll? How did he become privy to such obscure legend?”

“Not he, she,” Vernon said. “One of my investigators is trying to locate her through the manufacturer’s data on the box.”

Fredrick steepled his old fingers. “Would this woman be Romanian?”

Vernon shrugged. “I have no idea, sir. But a toy dealer did tell me she lived nearby.”

The old man paused. “This just gets stranger and stranger, doesn’t it? Ultimately, then, what do we have as far as you’re concerned? We have homicide evidence as well as an unrelated
doll
, which both reflect details of this myth.”

“A myth that almost no one knows about,” Vernon added. “But I wouldn’t even say the doll is ‘unrelated.’ I found another doll by the same designer at the first impalement.”

Fredrick sat through a timely pause. “It seems that your perpetrators are pulling an exceedingly well-researched series of copycat killings, and at the same time this bizarre
doll seems equally well researched. They’re creating symbols that the boyar registries say will signal the resurrection of Vlad Dracula.”

Vernon felt thrown for a loop. “Pardon me?”

Fredrick eyed him, then winked. “Here’s how it works, if you believe the legend, and I’ll reiterate for clarity. Since 1476, Kanesae, as a subcarnate vampire, has been prowling the earth, protecting Vlad’s secret. What’s the secret? No one knows exactly, but we do know bits and pieces. It is said that upon the thirteenth lifetime of Vlad, Kanesae will initiate a series of sacrifices—your murder victims, for example. This will prime the rite of resurrection that Vlad orchestrated on the day of his death, and when this has fully occurred, Kanesae will bestow Vlad’s blood—secreted so long ago in a clay flagon—”

“A
what?
” Vernon frowned.

“A flagon—it’s like a flask, a decanter. A vessel for liquid. And Kanesae will bestow the blood upon a worthy successor. This blood—partly the Devil’s blood, remember—will revive Vlad’s spirit in the body of the heir. Then Vlad will walk the earth again in a new body, with Kanesae at his side, to resume his reign of vampirism and atrocity upon mankind.” Fredrick chuckled minutely. “That’s—like I said—if you believe the legend….”

Vernon winced. “How did his blood get in this flagon?”

Fredrick labored to rise, got a book off one of his shelves, and photocopied a single page. “For your interest, here’s a xerox of the only portrait ever produced of Kanesae, the mistress of Dracula.”

Vernon looked captivated at the reproduction of a crude wood-block print. One corner read NURNBORG 1498, the other: KANESAE, ENAMOURER OF WLAD, CNIHT OF DRWGLYA.
I’m not liking this
, Vernon thought. In the print’s center stood a fanged nun suspiciously similar to Cristina Nichols’s figurine. The likeness proffered a bowl with three small circles on it.

Not a bowl
, Vernon reminded himself.
A chalice
.

A headless man lay on a stone slab in the background and at its base rested what appeared to be the severed head of a dog. Further off a crude castle could be seen, but surrounding the entire scene were dozens of impalement victims.

“What’s with the dog’s head?”

The old man sat back down. “Vlad’s body was said to be decapitated when it was discovered by a monk near Snagov Monastery but when the grave was dug up the bones of a headless dog were found instead. Vlad’s
actual
body was probably cremated nearby or dumped in Lake Snagov.” The professor pointed to the print. “And you’ll note the flagon containing Vlad’s blood.”

Vernon caught the detail: the modest carafelike vessel sitting beside the slab. “And the guy on the slab is Vlad?”

“Yes. His head was probably traded by the monks to Turkish soldiers in exchange for protection. The sultan of the Ottoman Empire—Mehmed II—had quite a bounty on that head. He needed to prove to his people that the dreaded Vlad the Impaler was dead.”

“So the monks who found the body cut off his head?”

“More than likely, and the reports that Vlad had been assassinated or killed in battle were invention.”

More confusion. “So the monks really killed him?”

“No, no. Vlad was already dead when the body was found. According to the legend, it was Kanesae who killed him. She bled him to death on the slab. She cut his throat.”

“So
she
put his blood in the flagon.” Vernon finally got it.

Fredrick nodded. “But to make things even
more
complicated, Vlad whispered a secret to Kanesae, with his last breath.”

Terrific
. The block-print made Vernon’s eyes hurt. “Earlier, you said the legend tells of an orchestration, some supernatural
strategy that would resurrect Vlad’s spirit after his thirteenth lifetime.”

“That’s right.”

“When is that?”

Fredrick leaned back again, obviously fatigued. “Well, since you asked…It’s right about now.”

Please, no,
she pleads but she knows that most of her means
yes. The phantom faceless women stroke her glistening body as
the all-
but-
nude nun holds the gemmed bowl.
“Tara flaesc Wallkya.”
The words crawl around the stone-
lined undercroft.
The colors, like vertical snakes of light, squirm and churn, and
their movement seems to escalate as her passions rise
.

“Serveste pe domnul!”
The words fly batlike out of the
dark while hot hands and mouths press more closely. A sound
echoes amid the chamber: a barking dog
…

She convulses as her orgasm quakes. Delighted squeals rise.
Through slit eyes she sees the nun’s grin, the pink tongue tip between
narrow fangs, and behind the churning light, she sees the
stone slab and the decanter but this time no sign of the man in
leather boots and strange armor. A streak of blood stains the
stone where the neck would be
.

“
It’s time, it’s time!” voices chatter
.

“
Look!” And a finger points
.

She rises, not knowing why, and suddenly she’s somewhere
else. When she turns to look back at the nun and her wanton
suitors, she only sees tiny white fangs—four sets of them—
dissolve away in the dark
.

Now she’s standing in a dense forest. It seems that between
every tree is a tall wooden pole on which someone has been impaled,
some through their hearts, some through their groins,
some upside-
down through their mouths. Some of the bodies
are
rotten, yet others still twitch with life, and the sound of moans
fills the forest like the wind
.